


A Sense of Pride

by EmmaDeMarais



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaDeMarais/pseuds/EmmaDeMarais
Summary: Dream doesn't quite understand his little sister's gift until Death and Despair draw him into Delirium's world where he discovers the beauty and peace that can be found in escaping reality.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Sense of Pride

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fontainebleau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/gifts).



To stand in the gallery of a member of the Endless is to be in the presence of immense and universal potential, for while the Endless are eternal they do not spend much of the passage of time together, each to his or her or their own domain. While visitations are certainly possible, they are rare as most tend to their responsibilities rather than make social calls upon their siblings.

Not that the Endless are anti-social - just some of them. So while Destiny prefers to walk his solitary paths in silence, Desire is always up for a party or some other good sport that may or may not wind up with him/her/them getting in trouble. Again.

Death, as an elder, tends to welcome her sisters, brothers and sister/brother, part from obligation and part because few seek Death in the first place.

So when one stands in their gallery and uses her sigil to call upon her, she appears, as Death always does in the end.

*

"Seriously?"

Death let out an aggrieved huff and stepped over to Dream's sigil on the wall of her gallery.

"Sister, I stand in my gallery..."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first two times!" She allowed a portal to open between her realm and the Dream Domain. Standing with her hands on her hips, she glared at her brother. "This couldn't wait? You have millennia to contact me and you just happen to wait until I'm on with someone else?"

A pale face frowned at her, or at least appeared to shift from its natural somber visage to one more serious. "You are entertaining one of our own?"

Death snickered. "More like she's entertaining me, but whatever. Come on over and wait your damn turn."

She turned away, the portal enlarging with the barest wave of her hand, allowing the embodiment of Dream entrance to her realm.

"So, it's not like she didn't ask nicely," Death went back to her previous conversation even as Dream came through to her gallery, "but I can't just go around saying yes to everyone who asks or who needs it, you know? There have to be some rules, otherwise it's chaos. Speaking of chaos, you might as well come over too since this is taking a while."

Just as Dream had arrived in her realm, Death opened up the already existing portal further to admit Delirium - she who had once been Delight - the youngest of the Endless.

"Thanks, Sis!" Finding no furniture Delirium simply caused a thick cloud of what looked like tangible fog - or perhaps cotton candy - to appear for her to recline on. A second smaller cloud appeared almost as an afterthought for her canine companion who followed her through the portal.

"Barnabas," Dream greeted the dog cordially.

"Oneiromancer," Barnabas replied with a nod then turned around twice, stamping down the cloud a bit, then curled up for a nap.

"I'll get to you in a bit," Death said to her brother, her tone a little dismissive. "She was here first." Regardless of the impatience of her demeanor, she still made the small effort to provide him with a place to seat himself as well.

"So why is this one different?" Delirium asked, her head tilting to the side where her bright tangerine hair grew long as if it was heavy compared to the side that was nearly devoid of hair. "Is she special? Is she something like human but not really? Is she not real? Is this a test? Will there be a test later?" Delirium suddenly looked worried and her hair receded, becoming shorter and paler as she scratched her scalp with rainbow colored fingers ending in plain white fingernails.

"She's perfectly real," Death assured her little sister. "It's just usually when we, I mean you, offer your gift to someone it's only for a little while, to help them escape until they can transition to the sunless lands or recover from their torment. This girl? She's going to live for decades. But after what happened to her? She'll spend every moment wanting to die and I can't just take her because I feel bad for her." She paused, thoughtful. "And since I can't justify simply taking her from Despair's grasp, we need another plan."

"It's rare for two of the Endless to intercede in the life of a mortal," Dream pointed out. "How can this one warrant the attentions of three of our kind?"

"This one in particular is quite the epic tale," Death explained. "Your ex could have inspired it if it wasn't so gruesome."

Dream responded with a brief scowl at the mention of the muse.

"Forgive me, sisters," he interjected again, his manner a bit brusque. "But this seems to have the simplest of solutions. Why does the girl not take her own life? Taking a suicide is not forbidden and I can easily send her a message of peace and quietude to help her greet the sunless lands with less trepidation."

Death and Delirium shared a glance of frustration and annoyance, Delirium rolling her mismatched eyes.

"He doesn't really *get* people, does he?" Delirium intoned.

"Amazingly, no, and you'd think with all the time he spends in their heads..." Death shook her own head, her spiky black locks falling over her eyes until she brushed them aside to air her grievances at her brother. "First, Brother Mine, not everyone is capable of causing a death at all, especially their own. Second, this religion thing they cooked up? Some of them have wacky rules like, oh, don't kill anybody even yourself. So this poor girl believes if she hurts the people who ruined her life she's no better than they are. And if she takes her own life, she's doomed for eternity to a special place where suicides are punished forever. Sound familiar? In the meantime her waking visions make the Corinthian look like a choirboy. I'm surprised her dreams aren't so ferocious they rend fissures in The Dreaming each night."

Dream raised his head and opened his mouth as if about to speak and then didn't, pausing for a pensive moment. "Show her to me," he said finally.

"I'll take him!" Delirium bounded up off her cloud pillow, waking the dog as she did. "Despair and I have already been taking turns with her."

*

To say Despair liked her job would not be quite correct, for it's difficult to enjoy pain as both a masochist and a sadist. There's always someone else's needs to consider. That she looked forward to her work and was reluctant for it to end rang closer to true. The Endless had responsibilities over their bailiwick and while hers might not be as colorful as the realm of Mania or as unusual as the Dreaming, Despair's domain was hers in all its deep dark gray glory.

Having to share a mortal that fell under her purview with a sibling was a sore spot; Desire had ruined quite a few of her clients in the past, probably just to spite her even if he/she/they swore it was just the family business. Nothing personal.

Dream might have been a necessary part of people's lives, but there were plenty of waking hours to keep her busy and their efforts separated. Delirium was an infrequent collaborator. Death was almost always hovering just outside the doorway to the painful worlds the wretched were lost in.

At the moment the girl she was watching was lost in contemplation of her gelatin dessert. She seemed to take some tiny pleasure in the bright color of it, much to Despair's chagrin, even though it likely tasted more like chemicals than foodstuffs.

"You asked her and she said the same thing, didn't she?" Despair didn't even turn around to greet Delirium, as if this were a continuum of an existing discussion. "She's going to live and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

"Sister," Dream greeted his sibling with a pleasant demeanor. "It is... good to see you."

Despair looked over her shoulder and managed a sort of nod of acknowledgement in her brother's direction in lieu of a more formal greeting. "Don't tell me we're all taking sides on this. It's just one girl. One stupid unlucky girl."

Dream turned his attention to the girl in question, using his power to reach into her mind to find her dreams. In doing so he brushed up against her memories and recoiled at the horrific visuals he encountered.

"Human beings did that to one of their own?" he marveled with more than a hint of disgust.

"It happens," Despair admitted with a shrug. 

Once he got to the girl's dreams, he could see why Death had been surprised that he hadn't felt her tear her way through the Dreaming. The pain was so intense he almost winced, the dreams themselves so little removed from her memories they could barely be called dreams. No imagination was needed to revisit the horrors inflicted on this girl, though it was certainly difficult to understand how anyone who was considered sentient could wish this level of anguish on any other sentient being at all, much less a living breathing human girl.

"I see it now," he admitted, withdrawing. "There is no respite, no repose, for this girl in my realm. I cannot help her."

"I want to help," Delirium whinged. "But I don't know what to do with her for all that time."

"You can't just take mortals into your realm?" Dream asked. 

"Sure, people visit," she ventured, "but it's not like they can go nuts and build houses and stuff there."

"Madness is rarely sustainable over the long term," Despair said. "Few live long once they explore my realm as well."

Barnabas cleared his throat, which for a dog just sounded like a few short soft barks.

"If I might...?"

Eyes blinking with surprise turned to him and he took a few steps backward faced with three formidable faces of the Endless.

"Go ahead, doggy. He's smart," Delirium stated proudly to no one in particular. "I like when he helps."

"It might be plausible for the girl to be given a job in the realm of Mania," Barnabas offered. "The Dreaming has its denizens, and while the girl is human and therefore subject to the laws of reality, she may still pass her waking hours in the alternate reality of Mania. As long as she has duties to keep her busy and to encourage her efforts away from memory, she might find some kind of peace until such time as Death might finally claim her fairly."

"But I don't need her to do anything!" Delirium exclaimed, her outburst causing a plethora of silver sparks to erupt around her like tiny fireworks. "Like, if anything needs cleaning I just make it go away and a different clean thing shows up eventually."

"I seem to recall you have enjoyed spending time coming up with new flavors that hadn't been considered before," Barnabas suggested. "Perhaps she could take on that position: Seeker of New Flavors?"

"Like that gelatin stuff?" Delirium wrinkled her nose. "Me? I like Japanese red maple flavor. Everybody's got a favorite flavor of something."

"I like Petrichor," Despair muttered, more to herself than out loud.

"I could do that!" Delirium agreed excitedly "As long as I still get to come up with flavors too!"

"But to what end? What would you do with all those flavors?" Despair asked, clearly unconvinced.

"I can use them," Dream said thoughtfully, nodding almost to himself. "She can experiment on flavors in your realm and - with your permission, Sister..." he bowed slightly towards his youngest sibling, making her grin gleefully and curtsey with her turquoise and slightly torn tutu in response. "I can send a member of my staff, perhaps the Raven, to collect them over time for use in new dreams. Taste is an area not fully explored in many dreams so unique flavors would certainly be useful in the act of creating new experiences for dreamers."

"I love it!" Delirium twirled delightedly then dropped to her knees and hugged Barnabas. "You're the best dog ever!" She screwed up her face for a second then brightened, turning her gaze to Dream. "But don't send the Raven. He's too scary for her. Oh! Oh! Send Fiddler's Green! He's my fav-o-rite! And so pretty when he's a place!"

Despair let out a long sigh. "Fine. She's all yours. I've got others."

"Thank you for being so gracious, Sister," Dream told her.

"Yeah, thanks, Sis." Delirium threw her arms around her sister's neck in an impulsive hug that startled her older sibling. "I never get to do things my way. I'll never forget this."

*

As Fiddler's Green was quite a popular dream destination Dream couldn't send him very often to fulfill his new duties in the realm of Mania, however once he returned and shifted into his human form to deliver his list of new flavors, he seemed each time to have enjoyed his visits into the domain of Delirium.

Curious, and admittedly not having spent much time in his baby sister's realm, Dream decided to accompany Fiddler's Green on his next visit.

The rainbow styled bridge Delirium built for the journey into her domain was childishly sweet, but once it blended with the pastoral beauty of Fiddler's Green, it made for a breathtakingly lovely environment for the girl to visit.

Dream spied Barnabas first - the dog acting as facilitator for these exchanges - and shifted his form to that of a large black cat so as to not startle the girl with anything resembling a human male form.

The dog spotted him as well and nodded his acknowledgement of the new form as well as a wordless greeting.

Beyond the boundaries of Fiddler's Green the realm of Mania floated around them as if gravity were a mere suggestion to be laughed at over tea and pronouns.

Out of the swirls of color emerged the girl, looking nothing like her earthly self. Her time in the realm seemed to have done her a world of good: she appeared lighthearted and hale, skipping through and over popping iridescent bubbles that formed a sort of stairwell down to the green fields where a large flower bush awaited.

"Hi, Kitty!" The girl said with a wave, clearly unconcerned by Dream's presence in animal form. "Hello again, Flower!" She blew a kiss at the one large blossom on the bush, causing the petals to blush rouge around the edges briefly. "I have six wonderful new flavors for you this time!"

She leaned in close and whispered into the open trumpet of the flower. Dream watched from below, in cat form, and could only hear a few words here and there: tickle, chartreused - past tense for some reason, a phrase that sounded like 'alien licorice' and finally bat cave preceded by some sort of adjective the Green found amusing as the bush shook as if in laughter at the word.

Once she pulled back she took a moment to pet Barnabas, clearly already friends with the canine.

"Do you want a treat?" She waved her hands in the air as if to beckon something forth and a smattering of fluffy flying objects appeared and hovered nearby. She had only to pluck one from the air around her and she did so, plucking a second to offer to the dog who ate it right up. "Ooh, that one tasted like a little yellow smiley face with a little smiley pink cheeks mixed in."

"Mine was awe with a side of blue gravy," Barnabas reported. "Very satisfying."

"Yay! I'm off to find more flavors. Bye until next time, Flower!"

With that, the blossom shook itself in farewell then closed as she began to fade back into the colorful air of Mania.

"Would you like to come see how she's doing?" Barnabas asked Dream. "It's all right. Your sister said it would be fine for you to visit while she's away."

Stepping out of Fiddler's Green into the full extent of his sister's realm was a jolting experience. Though Dream might have recognized the trappings of reality at the edges - what made her realm different from his own - all else seemed entirely unfamiliar. Colors had sound, breezes had personality and temperature varied wildly depending on no criteria he could fathom however neither cold nor hot was uncomfortable. Shapes were both amorphous yet somehow recognizable as their true selves, becoming more solid each time they were approached to be used for some purpose, not necessarily their original one.

The girl sat down on what looked like a small granite boulder, sinking into it like a cushy pouf, and began placing more of the tasty fluffy flying things on a ray of light that functioned as a long plate.

"Here Kitty! Try some of my favorites!" She held out one the same way she'd offered it to the dog and Dream took it carefully from her, still in cat form. The flavor was more of a sensation than a taste; he felt flooded with a warmth and contentment even as sweetness exploded on his tongue. "My boss lady calls that one Affection. It's one of my favorites. She calls it one of my vitamins so I'm supposed to eat at least one every day to stay healthy." 

Dream looked to Barnabas who simply cocked his dog head. "When in Rome, eat what makes the Romans happy?"

"I like this one best, even though it makes me sleeeepy..." She popped one in her mouth and her eyes almost immediately closed, the rock shifting in shape to support her like a bed and pillow.

It took Dream a second to realize what was wrong.

"She's not asleep. If she was asleep she'd be in my realm."

"It's not sleep, it's Pax. Try it."

Dream reverted to his normal form before putting it in his mouth.

Nothing.

He blinked, realizing things were not where they were when he last had his eyes open. Time had passed that he had not experienced.

"Welcome back," Barnabas greeted him from where he had apparently taken up a spot beside the girl on the rock. "Pax is a bit disconcerting if you're used to time, but it's quite restful." 

While Dream didn't sleep and dream as people did, he was able to recognize the altered state as one reminiscent of sleep, but far more restorative and without any imagined activity in the mind.

"So this is how she lives now," he mused.

"Yes," Barnabas answered simply. "And she likes it here. All the rest, all the bad stuff, it's all buried so deep she'll never find her way to where it's hidden. And when it's all over, Death will come for her in her time - no guilt, no pain."

Dream nodded his agreement, satisfied that his sister had done well for this poor girl.

"Let me know if there are others in the same need," he said, his cloak starting to shimmer around him as he prepared to return to his own domain. "I'm sure I can find room for more ideas in the Dreaming if they bring so much healing to those whom dreams cannot reach."

Retreating back, with Fiddler's Green beside him, Dream allowed himself to feel a rare emotion - one that he could not recall experiencing when it came to Delirium, even when she was Delight.

Pride.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta!


End file.
